Oando: How we plan to integrate 60000 out-of-school children

Oando Foundation has reiterated its commitment to ensuring 60,000 of the 10.5 million out-of-school children in Nigeria, are integrated back into the school system by 2018.

Already, the foundation said it had attained 16,000 of the said target in a scheme it commenced last year, it is, nonetheless, optimistic that it would have substantially achieved its objective by the time the scheme will be rounded off.

Head, Corporate Communications OANDO Plc, Alero Balogun, announced this at the firm’s corporate head office on Ajose Adeogun, Victoria Island.

Balogun said the foundation’s inspiration towards the initiative is derived from the fact that Nigeria has 10.5 of the 38 million out-of-school children globally, which is the highest in the world based on UNESCO’s statistics.To further worsen the scenario, the country also could not attain UNESCO EFA Goal by 2015.

“When we started this thing last year, we didn’t pretend that the figure of out-of-school children in Nigeria alone is 10.5 million. For us however, it was how to get them back into the school. I said earlier that about 2000 children came back to a particular school in Northern Nigeria because the school feeding programme started there. So the bottom line is, children would come back once you start the school feeding programme, but you have to make concerted efforts for them to remain and also monitor and document, and this will even help the government to profile the 16000 children.”

According to her, the foundation, which began in 1991 as a corporate social responsibility arm of Oando Plc, focuses ICT, Early Childhood Care Education, capacity building of teachers and scholarships, as well as special attention for girls in northern Nigeria, among others.

She said the foundation already has strong presence in 23 states, adding that the choice of which state to concentrate its energy on is largely dependent on poor performances of WASSCE in such state, and other needs such as gaps in infrastructural human capacity development, ICT, availability of good toilet, and portable water among other things.

To ensure teachers under the exercise are fully available while the exercise lasts, she said the foundation first seeks the state government’s nod that those involved are not transferred from their duty post for three years.

To ensure project integration, Balogun added that the foundation train and worked with school management based Committee (SMBC) who according to her, ensure they prod government to constantly provide budget for maintaining projects that the foundation has already completed and handed over.

According to her, the foundation also bore the brunt of recession. Nonetheless she said Oando Pls has continued to ensure consistent funding despite the harsh economic climate. According to her, the foundation engaged in some cost-cutting measure without compromising standard.

“When we started, contractors were doing the work; but now it’s the communities that build and roof the houses, and it’s easier to get the SMBC to say the school can be built for N4 million for a project that could have cost about N40 million before. So in the end we get value for money.”

“We also ensure quality by engaging state SUBEB to look at the quality of work done. The board gets their engineers from the work department to appraise the project because we do not want to compromise standard even though the projects are carried out at lower price,” she said.

After carrying out needs assessment to determine where the gaps are, Uduimoh said the Foundation always complements each of its programme component with strict monitoring so as to track progress.

“Let’s say we organise a teacher training, following the needs assessment to determine where the gaps are and design the trainings that will serve those needs, there are levels of monitoring and evaluation officers who ensure the training that have been received, results into knowledge transfer to the children. It helps track improvement year on year. Across all platforms, the totality of our work is to improve learning outcomes in schools,” she added.